Song Of My Present

I listened to this CD during the summer right before Steven and I got together every night on my hour drive home from waiting tables. Most of the time I was normally on the phone with him.

Shucks, I'm feeling sentimental with my pending move. My apartment is a MESS! Lots to blog about if people would put up my graduation on facebook I could post some pictures!

Last Week To-Do

• finish and submit 10 page Writing for the Web paper
• finish log for Business Writing
• peer review for Business Writing
  
• write 10 page seminar paper
• finish e-portfolio
• 4-5 page Humanities final paper (this assignment was bigger than I thought)
  

The first 3 should be done by Monday. And my Humanities paper isn't due until the 13th, so I've got tons of time to think about that one.

So things should stop being super stressed around my world except for my massive seminar paper. Since I haven't skipped any classes...I feel I might not go to the last ones of some of them...just maybe. :D

Asher Roth, you may love college...

But I sure as heck do not right now. Today I reached a breaking point, a new low, a freaking meltdown Today while meeting with a teacher I completely broke down crying over one critique about a thesis paragraph. I just couldn't deal with it and snapped a little. And of course I did this in front of my ultra-brilliant seminar teacher. This is actually a first in my college career. Then I could not stop the crying for the whole meeting! It was probably the most embarrassing moment of my life. And I've had some pretty embarrassing moments.


So instead of taking a nap that I needed (really should of cause I haven't been sleeping. Having nightmares where professors yell at me which is probably why I broke today) I went shopping, found some cuteness, went down a pants size, apparently. I was so bummed about today I couldn't even enjoy it. How messed up is that?

Just want to be done so that I can have my Steven. And really feeling to embarrassed to go to my seminar class tomorrow or to go to graduation. And my mom wonders why I didn't want to walk?

Coveting A Bookend? New Low.

As I walked into my Business Writting professor's office I was struck by 6 of these gorgeous bookends sparkling in her window. At which, I had to break her off mid-sentence with: "oh! I love your hoot-hoots! I mean...owls."

Thankfully, she then went on to talk about the glass company they came from: Blenko. Apparently, they're from the late 60's, and truth be told I'm in love with them. She said she has been trying to get rid of them (why, oh why, would you?) and that maybe she'd give me a set to thank me for all my hard work on this manual we've been working on. Oh...do not tease me! It feels weird to take graduation gifts from professors...but truth be told, I think I'd get over the awkwardness quickly once these gleaming gals made it to my bookcase...

Oh Mr. Weathers!

Steven passed along a comic to me that I thought was hilarious. He thought it described me...when, in fact, it has Ed Weathers written all over it. Mr. Weathers was my Technical Editing and Style teacher and he is beyond amazing. I've wanted to slip this comic under his door...but I'm not sure if he would get a kick out of it or think it was vulgar...I'll leave that up to you, especially if you know and love him like I do. Click onward to see the comic!
(I should also mention that's pretty much how he dresses...and well...it's love.)

Where's the Zen?

So today I went for a run. Not for kicks, but because I was so anxious/freaking out about school that I literally had to wear my self out and clear my head. This end of the semester is going to kill me more than others have. I'm thankful that it's my last one!

My To-Do list for the next 19 days:

• 2-4 page response for Bloodchild (I'm thinking it's going to be a 2 page response)
  
• Presentation of my paper idea for Seminar class
• 10 page paper for Seminar with critical sources
• e-portfolio with written personal narrative for Seminar
• finish manual for YMCA
• present manual to community partner
• finish Log for Business Writing
• Do group review and tell the teacher I basically did everything
• presentation about education in Frankenstein for my Humanities class
• 3 page creative paper for my humanities class
• 2 page final paper for humanities class
• client project for Writing for the Web
• 10 page web article for Writing for the Web
  

Senioritis

noun. A crippling disease that strikes high school [and college] seniors. Symptoms include: laziness, an over-excessive wearing of track pants, old athletic shirts, sweatpants, athletic shorts, and sweatshirts. Also features a lack of studying, repeated absences, and a generally dismissive attitude. The only known cure is a phenomenon known as GraduationI got this from urbandictionary.com

Grad Announcements

Because graduation announcements are so expensive I decided to make my own. Here is a picture of them before embellishment because Steven wanted to see it. I'm not sure why he thought he wasn't getting sent one... I'll be sending then out shortly and then hoping I do actually graduate...I'm more than a little concerned about that do to my teachers not giving ANY grades back! FML.

BBC Booklist- 40

I know I'm an English major...but I'd LOVE one of you to beat me at this thing mostly because I love classic literature and want everyone else to do the same. I found it on the facebook of my fave English Prof's lifepartner who, incidentally, I will be working with in my business writing class...



Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
5) Put in a note with your total in the subject


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X++++++++++
2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling X ++++++++ (7 for all the books and an extra one for Beedle the Bard)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible (Most of it) - X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman * tried it, got half way through Golden Compass and then stopped.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X (Well, a LOT of them!)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier* I've heard Graham talk about this book in Early English Novel so much I might as well have read it, but one day I will read it. I mean it's a few thousand pages. *
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD SalingerX
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - * Dianna has suggested this to me and needs to loan it.
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot * another thousand pages I need the time for.
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X+
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy X
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X++++++++++++ becoming my favorite Austen novel
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X++++ Favorite book as a child
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini * Steven's mum gave me this to read
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X+
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (tried so hard when I was little but I never liked Anne)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (Penelopiad is an amazing novella by Atwood)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons X
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X+
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov* bought this senior year of high school and need to read it
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X and the sequel
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce * One day. If I didn't have to work, I would have taken Graham's second half of novel...where they are reading this novel... I'm going to miss that charming man.
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath X++
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola (Read Ladies Paradise, love Zola)
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X +
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X+
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X (I've read this oh so many times...Hamlet you are a dead horse)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X (abridged version in the 10th grade, but I own the full version an dI'm going to read it)

So is it bad I want to go on bed-leave or something so that I can read all the novels I want to read.

Very surprised that Tom Jones was not on here...or Tristram Shandy...or Frankenstein...

Basically, this proves I have no life, laughs.

I've been holding on to this picture for a while. I think it sums up this semester for me. I mean...really. It's the first week and I'm already stressing way way too much.

I need to go clean something to calm down.

Lovey Dovey Kiss Kiss

My pining for a tattoo finally culminated in two gorgeous doves on my wrists. I'm in love with them; although, it's hard to get used to having tattoos in such a visible place. I've ordered some extremely cute cuff bracelets to cover them with.

Tomorrow Steven graduates from college. I'm so excited for him! Tonight his amazing family rolled into town. His mother and I altered his robe (it was too small around the waist since robes are based on height not size. We added some side panels. Steven and Pat--his little brother--played with the cats. :D) Tomorrow my parents come into town...and the parental units meet for the first time. I'm very nervous about that and keeping my new tats covered. My Mother is not a fan of bod mods and my Dad was ok until I got more than him. Tomorrow will be interesting to say the least...kill me now, kthx.

My sister asked about my other tats a while ago so I'll catch everyone up on my previous tattoo endeavors.

1: My stars


2: My flowers

I'm aware that I've completely disappeared for the past...oh...week. I'm working through my exams. I only have 2 more to go (Ren Lit, Technical Editing). I'll be done Wednesday, then I can enjoy my break!

Plan Foiled

I've got this huge paper I'm supposed to be working on. Since it is the last paper I'll be writing for a month I'm having tons of trouble concentrating. I can procrastinate like no one you have ever met. In fact, I'm doing it right now. My big plan was to go across the street to Burger King and sit there and write without the distraction of internet and with the luxury of food right there. Well, it turns out they have absolutely no power outlets. The one I found didn't have power running to it. So alas, I'm back on campus. Once I get my quote from Lady Susan I swear up and down that I'm turning off the internet and writing. ALL DAY! I want to get this dumb thing done so that I can stress about my finals. Yay?

My Thanksgiving Schedule:

If I disappear this week, this is why:

Monday:
Finish Children's Lit paper
Find document to collate
Find differences
Change litterboxes
Work

Tuesday:
Write Collation paper

Wednesday:
Pet-sit
Write Collation paper
Clean Steven's room
Do laundry
Work

Thursday:
Pet-sit
Wash dishes
Put up tree
Do what I didn't do Wed.

Friday:
Work
Read Wuthering Heights

Saturday:
Wait for Steven to get back

Study Folks

Update: So all my studying paid off. I got an A- on my Technical Editing grammar exam. I proved to myself that I can do it and I hope this will lead to a fabulous job editing something. I genuine enjoy it because I am a dork.

I'm ahead on my paper for my Novel class. Yays.

Sorry that I've dropped off the planet for a bit. I've got blog plans in the works. Such as next weekend I plan to get a tattoo and go to the pumpkin patch. So! Lots will be coming up. So don't get bored and run away.

Life just takes over for a while.

I just had a very post-modernist thought. I've been spending almost all of my weekend studying for my Technical Editing exam. I started thinking about what would happen if I failed. And if I fail tomorrow and still spent the whole week studying, couldn't I have just had a pleasant weekend, not studied, and still failed if I had known I was doomed to fail anyway?

Yeah...

Basically, I don't want my weekend to have been wasted in vain.

Hi, I'm Amanda and I over-analyze everything.

I've got so much to do it hurts a little.

1. Technical Editing exam tomorrow that is going to break me either body or soul.
   
2. Ren Lit essay midterm Wednesday. I have to prepare 2 outlines before hand.
   
3. Reading Journal due Wednesday. This wouldn't be so bad if I actually had the time to finish the book.
   
4. Internet quiz Wednesday
5. Novel Paper (8-10 pages) due next Monday that I haven't even started on except the first paragraph.
   
6. Children's Lit midterm next Tuesday
   

We had our first rainy day here at school. How I love them! However, Blacksburg isn't known for its consistent weather. Tomorrow, it might very well snow.

I was able to break out my sweatshirt for the first time this year. I've had some good times in this sweatshirt. Every study session, every solo illness, every cold fall day I've been wrapped in its warmth. After all, what is the college experience without your favorite logo-wear?

Tonight I had a full night of homework. Ew. That's the life I chose, so I need to stick it out. 78 pages of Robinson Crusoe, a reading journal for what I read, introduction to my Children's Lit book, and I started on 45 pages of reading for Technical Editing. I so should have gone into Professional Writing (kicking myself HARD for being so dumb and academic in my "youth") but I would be darn good at being an editor once I beef up on my grammar. I think editing is what I want to do when it is all said and done and I've paid 40,000 for a piece of paper that doesn't even come framed.

Steven and I went to dinner at this Mexican place we frequent quite often. It wasn't as great as I remembered. I also had a serious craving for ice cream. So I blatantly ate it without the aid of dairy pills. I'm paying for it now twice with Mexican and with dairy. After dinner, Steven came over and we did homework. It was oddly...amazing! We even curled up in bed, each with an assignment and the reading light on. It made me smile.

I've got loads to do this weekend. Steven is going out of town, so I think that will give me a great opportunity to get ahead in some of my reading... I mean my English Novel class... is seriously going to kill me. The History of Tom Jones alone is 896 pages! That's just one of 8 books and about 20 pages worth of papers in that particular class.

This is Amanda freaking out.

So if my blogging is not as prolific in the next few months, I beg your forgiveness in advance because I'm just trying to keep my head above the intellectual waters.

First Class

(I used to read this as a kid on the night before school)

My first class, Renaissance Lit, seemed relatively painless. Two 4 page papers, essay midterm, essay final; the basic English class. However, it was located in room 109 Shanks. It might as well have been in room 101 in 1984, since that is the room that I had Shakespeare in. Shakespeare, who is part of the "Renaissance Literature" cannon and is also the worst class I have ever taken, with the worst teacher I have ever had.

Irony, you are a cruel mistress.

Maybe it is the universe's way of telling me to get back on that proverbial horse. Don't let one class slow me down, don't let one teacher convince me I'm a plague to the English degree.

If I don't like Chaucer or Technical Editing then I'm going to stay in the class, but I'm not holding my breath for that one. If I don't keep it in my schedule, I at least have the knowledge I attended one class of Renaissance lit and tackled my hatred of Shakespeare. I don't think my colors showed too much when his name was mentioned.

We Never Had Lawn Flamingos

So sorry I disappeared for a few days! Steven got back in to town early. Long story short he came home early and that may or may not have had to do with a little misunderstanding and a slight temper tantrum on my end. Ok, long story: I missed him like I would miss air if I stopped breathing, he wasn't going to come home until the day before school started, and I wanted to have some nice relaxing time with him before my life goes to hell when I start school again and I basically just blew up with rage at some stuff. Either way he got back on Friday. Steven also got his first tattoo and I originally was not thrilled about it, but it is growing on me.

Our weekend was off to a rough start but I'm sort of glad for it. We got out some issues and that was great. I have missed him. Him being gone was like a giant piece of myself was gone and I just couldn't find it. It was like trying to find a missing item and looking everywhere you thought you'd placed it, going to all the old familiar places and realizing it isn't anywhere.

I missed all of him, every single bit. Being away from him for a little bit, even though we're in the same town again, is torture! Right now: I miss him and he was just here. I miss having him sleep in the same room with me the most. That's something I got very used to for the brief period I stayed with him last school year due to problems in my apartment. I got used to hearing him doze off and then seeing him when I woke up. This weekend he stayed with me at my apartment. We slept holding hands and I couldn't stop hugging him. I think I could have smothered him with all my affection. Every time I woke up I'd mumble: "I could do this forever" and "I love you." Both are truths.

On the more hilarious side: I also mumbled to him once that "We never had lawn flamingos" and also tried to offer him our latest harvest candle scents at Pier 1. Oh my... but he took it all in stride saying: "Pink? No way, we can spray paint them white though." This is why I love him.

Fast Breaking News: Amanda has her last first day of school tomorrow. First class: Renaissance Lit (totally already thinking of dropping for Chaucer) at 9:30 am.

Real Pain For My Sham Friends

It is obvious by my recent facebook statuses that I am desperate for some new friends in town. For a while I went down a path that led me to...well...stupid. People incapable of being serious, people I hang out with that I don't really know much about, and when I finally learned things about them I didn't really like what I saw. So I'm on a mission, an epic quest, if you will, to find new friends that aren't fake friends or at least friends that can have deep conversation, kind of like my English friends. I really heart them for their brains...did that make me sound like a zombie?

My policy of life has always been to surround myself with brilliant people because I learn from other's opinions. I learn most from other people and the stimulation they bring. If I don't have that I dry up mentally. Since my whole life until now has been built around my brain, I just can't let that happen.

I've spent this whole summer trying to get back some of my zeal for school and I'm so terrified of this next school year. It could make or break me. I'm hoping my classic stubborn streak raises its fabulous head. I'm not a Taurus for nothing, babe.